Eat Your Breakfast!

Before any of the new cool places offered us breakfast: the 2019 version, The Peppermill was the place if you wanted to go out before 11am. Here was never brilliant food for any meal, but it was the epitome of comfort food for all meals. Couple that with a great Metairie location, and a phenom was born. So was a community of people for whom Peppermill was a regular part of their life. Comfortable.

The Peppermill circa 2019 is still comfortable, serving the same people, or maybe different generations of them, and the same food. Plus a few new things. Owner Cami Chiarella wants to put her chicken and waffles up against any in town. She’s back in the kitchen making the sauce herself.

Those chicken and waffles would likely be ordered by a guest of one of the regulars here. The Peppermill is about familiar. Here you will find great fluffy pancakes like your mom would make. Really anything that your mom would make. Omelets are good, biscuits baked high with a tinge of brown crust, butter in the cute packets on the table. Grits are the right consistency. They aren’t gourmet - they’re just grits. You can get fancy with Benedicts, but these would be the comfortable rather than edgy versions of this local favorite breakfast dish.

The Riccobono's go back a long way to the Buck 49 Steakhouse, a local chain multiplying to six at one point. Their story is woven into the culinary fabric of New Orleans. The cousins (which are legion and branch into all directions, like the Uddo brothers) have fanned out into several restaurants throughout the city, keeping these comfortable traditions alive. For three generations people have loved the familiar comfort food provided by the Riccobono’s. Clearly they are doing something right. Just don’t come here looking for porridge.